Bill Donohue comments on some of the issues that are
gripping the critics of Pope Francis:
Pope Francis has captured the goodwill, indeed the love, of millions around the
globe, and the response is hardly confined to Catholic circles. However, his
critics are emerging, though none with any luck.
Sex is always a good subject for Catholic haters. Their goal—sex without
consequences (kids and diseases)—is threatened when religious leaders counsel
the virtue of restraint. Similarly, we have the lament of people like Mary
Johnson, a former nun, who told the MSNBC audience how “marginalized” gay
and lesbian Catholics are. Catholic-bashing lawyer Marci Hamilton chimed in,
commenting about the “sex abuse scandal that has scandalized the church over
the past decade.” Any high school fact checker knows better: the timeline of
the homosexual scandal was the mid-60s to the mid-80s.
Washington Post opinion writer Eugene Robinson wants to know “what did the
newly chosen Pope Francis do” about the right-wing dictatorship in Argentina’s
“Dirty War”? We have an answer from Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the 1980 Nobel Peace
Prize winner: he said the pope “was no accomplice of the dictatorship.” Indeed,
he firmly concluded, “He can’t be accused of that.” Others have written books
praising the pope for his yeoman efforts in undermining the junta.
Miguel A. De La Torre, a professor at the School
of Theology in Denver, condemns the pope for not changing
“the social structure that creates poverty.” Guilty as charged. Nor did the
pope cure insanity; if he did we would not be subjected to such crazy talk.
Sadly, more than a few evangelicals are showing how insecure they are. Bethany
Blankley is particularly exercised over Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and Fox
News executive editor John Moody for saying God was at work in selecting the
pope. Of course He was. Too bad she never learned of the Holy Spirit in Sunday
School.